Insomniac made their name with the excellent Ratchet & Clank series on PS2 and this alien annihilation First Person Shooter seems quite a departure from those. PS3 needs a “Halo beater” (or maybe “equaller”) and this is our first taste of what the PS3 can offer to the sci-fi FPS genre.
Clearly taking inspiration from the aforementioned Halo, Half Life 2 and maybe a hint of Starship Troopers or War of the Worlds, Resistance is actually very much like a sci-fi Call of Duty only you fight alongside allies against an unrelenting horde of alien beasties (called Chimera) instead of Nazis in this alternate history re-imagination of the 20th century. The control setup is very much the standard one we’ve come to expect, and movement and aiming is all very tight and precise. Weapons feel solid and punch plenty of damage – just as well as some of the bigger Chimera take some killing. Most weapons have handy alternate fire modes, and you’ll get everything from typical automatic rifles, shotguns and grenades to sniper weapons and Chimera weapons like the Auger, a railgun-type weapon that can shoot through walls and raise a protective shield – I’ll say no more but you will come to love the Bullseye… It’s a varied and imaginative arsenal, which isn’t surprising if you think back to Ratchet & Clank.
In Resistance: Fall of Man, the U.S. and Britain band together in a last-ditch effort to save the world from the Chimera - a species of unknown origin that converts other life forms into more Chimera. Russia and Europe are overrun, and the human race’s hope for survival is slim, and the tide of the battle rests on the shoulders of U.S. Army Ranger, Sgt. Nathan Hale - that’s you that is. There are several “real world” locations in the UK and everything looks great, with very few things that displease the eye, although if you look hard enough you’ll find some tatty bits, dodgy animation and crappy lo-res textures that you just don’t see in the Xbox 360’s big titles. Highly active physics (over the top, even) mean just about everything that isn’t firmly planted is damageable, explosive or moveable, and there are some very cool particle effects and glass shatters in a very realistic way. There are also frequently more characters on screen than I remember ever seeing in a FPS before, and this gives battles a real edge, although they seem to lack the intensity of some of Halo or Call of Duty’s more memorable battles. The frame rate is smooth and never seems to judder, regardless of how much mayhem is going on – no mean feat.
The AI is smart with the enemy always using their weapons well and often attacking from more than one direction, frequently trying to flank you and use the spacious settings. They’ll also intelligently skulk away and hide if mortally wounded, and you’ll often have to hunt them down to finish them off. The only gripe I’d have is that the Chimera do get a bit samey after a while, as most of the fighting will be against the bipedal humanoid soldier type. Battles also lack that edge-of-the-seat sphincter factor that some of the best FPS supply, although the game does get more exciting towards the end. There’s a bit of driving to be done but it feels kind of tacked-on in the same way as Gears of War's and Pariah’s driving sections did.
The multiplayer game is "a bit Halo 2" and "a bit Gears of War", the option to play as each opposing race from the solo game might not be original but has seldom been done better, and the advantages and disadvantages of each character type (humans can move faster than the Chimera who can see through walls for a limited time) balance out very evenly across a decent selection of multiplayer modes (Deathmatch, team Deathmatch, Meltdown, and Capture the Flag were the most popular). The game supports up to 40 players but we never found that big a game, and the armour upgrades that you can unlock with XP are a must, as you’ll be at a huge disadvantage without them. The offline co-op game works well with its vertical split screen, it even seems to have more enemies than the solo campaign and the frame rate rarely drops. So despite no online co-op mode like Gears has, it gets a big thumbs up, all shooters benefit from a well-implemented co-op mode and R:FoM is one of the best – we like, we like a lot.
Halo beater? Well… maybe not, but Resistance: Fall of Man is an unmissable early PS3 title for FPS fans and sets the bar high for anything that follows it - PS3 Killzone is going to have to be something very special indeed…
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